Tag Archives: Lois Lerner

The first IT specialist to inspect the computer hard drive of former IRS exemptions director Lois Lerner was legally blind, according to an affidavit filed last year by Stephen Manning, deputy chief information officer for strategy and modernization at the IRS.

Manning’s July 18, 2014, affidavit pertained to a lawsuit filed by True the Vote against the IRS alleging that Lerner led an effort to target it and similar conservative groups by refusing to grant them tax-exempt status.

J. Christian Adams, a former Department of Justice attorney writing for PJ Media, flagged the affidavit which provided the educational background of the IT specialist.

“According to the Specialist, prior to joining the Internal Revenue Service, from 2004 to 2005, formal Microsoft training was completed through Lions World Services for the Blind, a certified Microsoft training and testing center,” Manning stated. DailyCaller

Top IRS officials specifically targeted conservative political party groups and religious groups and misled the public about its targeting program led by ex-official Lois Lerner, according to a new House Oversight and Government Reform Committee congressional report.

“The Committee has identified eight senior leaders who were in a position to prevent or to stop the IRS’s targeting of conservative applicants,” the Oversight report states. “Each of these leaders could have and should have done more to prevent the IRS’s targeting of conservative tax-exempt applicants.”

Here are six major takeaways from the report:

1. The IRS admitted that the front office was “spinning” about the targeting rumors as early as 2012, after IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman denied the tea party targeting to Congress.

“This is what the front office and [IRS Chief of Communications and Liaison] Frank [Keith] are spinning about now,” an IRS legislative affairs office employee wrote in an email to co-workers, referring to a news article on Shulman’s dishonest testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, in which he denied rumors of improper targeting.

2. Then-IRS commissioner Steven T. Miller almost broke down and told the truth about the tea party targeting at a July 2012 hearing, but Lerner’s sidekick Nikole Flax told him not to. Read More at the Daily Caller

“Federal investigators have told Congress that they have recovered data that may include lost emails from one of the pivotal figures in the controversy over the Internal Revenue Service’s treatment of tea party groups, congressional aides said Friday.

Frederick Hill, a spokesman for Republicans who run the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said the investigators said at a staff briefing Friday that they have recovered up to 30,000 emails to and from Lois Lerner.

A statement from Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee was more measured. It said the investigators have recovered data that may include Lerner emails.

The investigators were from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, which audits the IRS. A spokeswoman for the inspector general, Karen Kraushaar, declined to comment, saying the investigation was continuing.”FoxNews

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It seems the IRS has found and are reviewing backup tapes. It is not know if any of former IRS employee Lois Lerner’s emails are on the backup. More stonewalling. It also seems Lerner’s hard drive was only scratched and not irreparbly damaged.

The head of the IRS confirmed Wednesday that investigators looking into missing emails from ex-agency official Lois Lerner have found and are reviewing “backup tapes” — despite earlier IRS claims that the tapes had been recycled.

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, testifying before a House oversight subcommittee, stressed that he does not know “how they found them” or “whether there’s anything on them or not.” But he said the inspector general’s office advised him the investigators are reviewing tapes to see if they contain any “recoverable” material. Continue reading Lois Lerner’s Emails May Not Be Missing→

A federal judge in Cincinnati has allowed a lawsuit by 10 tea party groups to move forward against the Internal Revenue Service. Lead attorney for tea party groups Edward Greim said, “When an officer of the federal government does something that’s unconstitutional and they do it with the right level of intent — and we think the evidence here establishes that these individuals did — we think they should be held to answer for their conduct.”

A federal judge has allowed a lawsuit by 10 tea party groups to move forward against the Internal Revenue Service, rejecting a request by the federal government to dismiss all the allegations that the agency subjected conservative groups to additional, often burdensome scrutiny. In her ruling Thursday, Judge Susan Dlott allowed two of the tea party groups’ claims — including that the IRS discriminated and retaliated against them based on their views in violation of their free speech rights — to survive to trial.

The Cincinnati-based Dlott did dismiss a third claim, ruling the tea party groups could not pursue allegations of privacy violations on behalf of their individual members. The individuals themselves have to do that, she said.

IRS former-employee Lois Lerner wanted to refer Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley for an audit after mistakenly receiving an invitation to a party intended for Grassley was delivered to Lerner. The organization that sent the party invitation offered to pay travel expenses for Grassley’s wife. The travel expenses would be legal as long as Grassley reported it. Before Grassley even accepted the invitation Lerner wanted to refer Grassley for an IRS audit. Other emails show her colleagues talking her out of it. Senator Grassley did not attend the event. House Ways and Means Committee email in question.

House Ways and Means Committee: Today, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) announced the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) targeting of conservative individuals includes a sitting United States Senator. According to emails reviewed by the Committee under its Section 6103 authority, which allows the Committee to review confidential taxpayer information, Lois Lerner sought to have Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) referred for IRS examination.

On a matter this serious, the administration can’t adequately investigate itself. Given the amount of smoke now rising from the IRS, many Americans won’t be much interested in what one arm of the administration concludes about other arms, including the IRS, the Treasury Department of which it’s part, and possibly the White House.

That’s why we’ve urged Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor — a phrase that, like “customer support” or “designated hitter,” provokes Pavlovian suspicions. We’ve been skeptical of some special prosecutors and their tendency toward mission creep. But we’ve also seen situations where only a special prosecutor has the independence and credibility to resolve a case that drips with politics, as when then-U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago investigated (and convicted of perjury and other offenses) I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who had been Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff.

Why Holder won’t act is a mystery he’s inviting Americans to resolve, uncharitably, in their own minds.

This 13-month refusal to name a special prosecutor has become its own curiosity.

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By law the IRS is required to backup its communications. From 2005 to 2010 the IRS signed a contract with Sonasoft, an email-archiving company based in San Jose, California. The company’s slogans are “Email Archiving Done Right” and “Point-Click Recovery.” Sonasoft was providing “automatic data processing” services for the IRS throughout 2009 to 2011, the period in which Lerner sent her missing emails.

Sonosoft’s 2009 tweet bragging about being the backup servers for the IRS.

Not only did the emails go poof but so did the hard drive. Now IRS Commissioner Koskinen has made the fantastic claim that the hard drive was thrown out and recycled. The IRS has a letter from the House Ways and Means committee requesting Lois Lerner’s emails and they go ‘poof’, instead of keeping the hard drive it is thrown out!
This week the IRS was unable to produce emails from six other employees. The IRS has also claimed it recycled its backup tapes so that it only had six months of server backups available.

Six more IRS employee computers crashed and all their emails are gone; poof! The six were involved in the targeting of conservative groups, religious groups, and groups that disagreed with the current administration. Among those whose emails are gone is Nikole Flax, who was chief of staff to Lerner’s boss and then-deputy commissioner Steven Miller. The Federal Records Act requires emails to be saved, on the IRS website is instructions for employees regarding the Federal Records Act; print and file the emails.

Investigators from the House Ways and Means Committee interviewed IRS technicians Monday. The technicians said they first realized that Lerner’s emails were lost in February or March — months before they informed congressional investigators, said a statement by two top Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee, chairman Dave Camp of Michigan and subcommittee chairman Charles Boustany of Louisiana.

The two lawmakers called on the Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the IRS, something Attorney General Eric Holder has declined to do in the past.